Astronomy

It may be surprising to see a lot of material about astronomy in a book about evolution.
But evolution is not just about ape-like creatures turning into humans. Evolution
is a philosophy trying to explain everything without God. Thus, it must be applied
to the origin of the universe and solar system. Thus, Teaching about Evolution and
the Nature of Science presents the prevailing evolutionary view on astronomical
origins. Also, Teaching about Evolution hopes to diffuse opposition to
evolution by a misleading comparison to opposition to heliocentrism (a sun-centered
solar system). This chapter critically analyzes typical evolutionary ideas about
the universe and solar system, as well as the Galileo controversy.

The big bang theory

Teaching about Evolution, page 52, states:

The origin of the universe remains one of the greatest questions in science. The
big bang theory places the origin between 10 and 20 billion years ago, when the
universe began in a hot dense state; according to this theory, the universe has
been expanding ever since.

Early in the history of the universe, matter, primarily the light atoms hydrogen
and helium, clumped together by gravitational attraction to form countless trillions
of stars. Billions of galaxies, each of which is a gravitationally bound cluster
of billions of stars, now form most of the visible mass in the universe.

Stars produce energy from nuclear reactions, primarily the fusion of hydrogen to
form helium. These and other processes have led to the formation of the other elements.

We should first note that even under their perspective, the authors admit that the
universe had a beginning. When combined with the principle of causality,
‘everything which has a beginning has a cause,’ it logically entails
that the universe has a cause.1

Many Christians support the big bang theory because it implies a beginning of the
universe. However, other Christians, based on the teaching of the Bible, reject
the big bang.

The big bang teaches that the sun and many other stars formed before the earth,
while Genesis teaches that they were made on the fourth day after the earth,
and only about 6,000 years ago rather than 10–20 billion years ago. The big
bang also entails millions of years of death, disease, and pain before Adam’s
sin, which contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture, which is thus unacceptable
to biblical Christians. Also, the big bang theory has many scientific problems as
outlined in the next section, and quite a few secular astronomers reject it.

Scientific problems

Although the above quote from Teaching about Evolution rather simplistically
moves from the big bang to the formation of galaxies and stars, it is not so simple.
Dr James Trefil, professor of physics at George Mason University,
Virginia, accepts the big bang model, but he admits that there are fundamental problems:

There shouldn’t be galaxies out there at all, and even if there are galaxies,
they shouldn’t be grouped together the way they are.

He later continues:

The problem of explaining the existence of galaxies has proved to be one of the
thorniest in cosmology. By all rights, they just shouldn’t be there, yet there
they sit. It’s hard to convey the depth of the frustration that this simple
fact induces among scientists.2

The creationist cosmologist, Dr John Rankin, also showed mathematically
in his Ph.D. thesis that galaxies would not form from the big bang.3

The formation of stars after the alleged big bang is also a huge problem. The creationist
astronomer, Dr Danny Faulkner, pointed out:

Stars supposedly condensed out of vast clouds of gas, and it has long been recognized
that the clouds don’t spontaneously collapse and form stars, they need to
be pushed somehow to be started. There have been a number of suggestions to get
the process started, and almost all of them require having stars to start with [e.g.
a shockwave from an exploding star causing compression of a nearby gas cloud]. This
is the old chicken and egg problem; it can’t account for the origin of stars
in the first place.4

Another problem is cooling a gas cloud enough for it to collapse. This requires
molecules to radiate the heat away. But as Teaching about Evolution points
out in the quote earlier, the big bang would produce mainly hydrogen and helium,
unsuitable for making the molecules apart from H2, which would be destroyed
rapidly under the ultraviolet light present, and which usually needs dust grains
for its formation—and dust grains require heavier elements. The heavier elements,
according to the theory, require pre-existing stars. Again, there is a
chicken and egg problem of needing stars to produce stars.

Abraham Loeb of Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics says: ‘The
truth is that we don’t understand star formation at a fundamental level.’5

Assumptions

The big bang is actually based on a non-scientific assumption called the
cosmological principle, which states that an observer’s view of the
universe depends neither on the direction in which he looks nor on his location.
That is, the earth is nowhere special. However, there are alternatives to the big
bang that reject this assumption. One has been proposed in the
book Starlight and Time6by Dr Russell
Humphreys, a physicist working with Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque,
New Mexico. He has developed a new cosmology which uses the same theoretical foundation
as all modern cosmologies including the big-bang—Einstein’s theory of
general relativity.

This results in a cosmology which allows for the formation of the universe in the
biblical time-frame, as well as the traveling of light to earth from stars billions
of light years distant. This plausible solution to a commonly raised skeptical problem
works because general relativity shows that time is different in different reference
frames with different gravitational fields. So the universe could have been made
in six ordinary days in earth’s reference frame, but the light had ample time
to travel in an extraterrestrial reference frame. However, as with all scientific
theories, we should not be too dogmatic about this model, although it seems very
good.

The solar system

Teaching about Evolution, page 52, states:

The sun, the earth and the rest of the solar system formed from a nebular cloud
of dust and gas 4.5 billion years ago.

As usual, the book’s authors are dogmatic about what happened, although they
weren’t there. However, this nebular hypothesis has many problems.
One authority summarized: ‘The clouds are too hot, too magnetic,
and they rotate too rapidly.’7

One major problem can be shown by accomplished skaters spinning on ice. As skaters
pull their arms in, they spin faster. This effect is due to what physicists call
the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. Angular momentum = mass x
velocity x distance from the center of mass, and always stays constant in an isolated
system. When the skaters pull their arms in, the distance from the center decreases,
so they spin faster or else angular momentum would not stay constant. In the alleged
formation of our sun from a nebula in space, the same effect would have occurred
as the gases contracted into the center to form the sun. This would have caused
the sun to spin very rapidly. Actually, our sun spins very slowly, while the planets
move very rapidly around the sun. In fact, although the sun has over 99 percent
of the mass of the solar system, it has only 2 percent of the angular momentum.
This pattern is directly opposite to the pattern predicted for the nebular hypothesis.
Evolutionists have tried to solve this problem, but a well-known solar system scientist,
Dr Stuart Ross Taylor, has said in a recent book, ‘The ultimate
origin of the solar system’s angular momentum remains obscure.’8

Another problem with the nebular hypothesis is the formation of the gaseous planets.
According to this theory, as the gas pulled together into the planets, the young
sun would have passed through what is called the T-Tauri phase. In this
phase, the sun would have given off an intense solar wind, far more intense than
at present. This solar wind would have driven excess gas and dust
out of the still-forming solar system and thus there would no longer have been enough
of the light gases left to form Jupiter and the other three giant gas planets. This
would leave these four gas planets smaller than we find them today.9

Heliocentrism (aka geokineticism)

Science versus religion?

Like much secular literature, Teaching about Evolution presents a rather
simplistic and even misleading account of the Galileo controversy. It was certainly not a simple case of science versus the Church (p. 27–30).10 However, Teaching about Evolution, to
its credit, does not promote the common skeptical canard that the Bible teaches
that the earth is flat and that this belief was widespread in medieval times.

Isaiah
40:22 refers to ‘the circle of the earth,’
or in the Italian translation, globo. The Hebrew is khûg
(חוּג) = sphericity or roundness.
Even if the translation ‘circle’ is adhered to, think about Neil Armstrong
in space—to him, the spherical earth would have appeared circular regardless
of which direction he viewed it from.

Also, Jesus Christ’s prophecy about His second coming in Luke 17:34–36
implies that He knew about a round earth. He stated that different people on earth
would experience night, morning, and midday at the same time. This is possible because
the spheroidal earth is rotating on its axis, which allows the sun to shine on different
areas at different times. But it would be an inconceivable prophecy if Christ believed
in a flat earth.

The idea that Columbus had to disprove that the earth was flat is a myth started
by Washington Irving in his 1828 book The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.
This was a self-confessed mixture of fact and fiction. The historian
J.B. Russell has documented that nearly all Christian scholars who have ever discussed
the earth’s shape have assented to its roundness.11

As many historians of science have noticed, the first to oppose Galileo was the
scientific establishment. The prevailing ‘scientific’ wisdom of his
day was the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic theory. This was an unwieldy geocentric
system; that is, with the earth at the center of the universe and other heavenly
bodies in highly complex orbits around the earth. As Arthur Koestler
wrote:

But there existed a powerful body of men whose hostility to Galileo never abated:
the Aristotelians at the Universities … . Innovation is a twofold threat
to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the
deeper fear that their whole laboriously constructed edifice might collapse. The
academic backwoods-men have been the curse of genius … it was this threat—not
Bishop Dantiscus or Pope Paul III—which had cowed Canon Koppernigk [i.e.,
Copernicus] into silence … .

The first serious attack on religious grounds came also not from clerical quarters,
but from a layman—none other than delle Colombe, the leader of the [ardent
Aristotelian] league … .

The earthly nature of the moon, the existence of sunspots meant the abandonment
of the [pagan!] Aristotelian doctrines on the perfect and unchangeable nature of
the celestial spheres.12

Conversely, at first the church was open to Galileo’s discoveries. Astronomers
of the Jesuit Order, ‘the intellectual spearhead of the Catholic Church,’
even improved on them. Only 50 years later, they were teaching this theory in China.
They also protected Johannes Kepler, who discovered that planets move in ellipses
around the sun. Even the Pope, Paul V, received Galileo in friendly audience.

The leading Roman Catholic theologian of the day, Cardinal Robert
Bellarmine said it was ‘excellent good sense’ to claim that Galileo’s
model was mathematically simpler. And he said:

If there were a real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe, that the
Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the
Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in
explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should
rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion false
which has been proved to be true. But I do not think there is any such proof since
none has been shown to me.13

This shows people were allowed to state that the heliocentric (sun-centered) system
was a superior hypothesis to the earth-centered system. Also, the leading theologian
was prepared to change his understanding of Scripture, if the system were proven—i.e.,
to correct his misunderstanding that Scripture taught the Ptolemaic system of astronomy.
The misunderstanding arose because people failed to realize that biblical passages
must be understood in terms of what the author was trying to convey. As
shown below, passages referring to the rising and setting sun (for example, Eccles. 1:5)
were not intended to teach a particular astronomical model like Ptolemy’s.
Rather, they are describing events in understandable, but still scientifically valid
terms that even modern people use, so any reader will understand what is meant.

Another problem was that some of the clergy supported the Ptolemaic system using
verses in the Psalms. However, the Psalms are clearly poetic,
not historical like Genesis.14 Thus, they were never
intended to be used as a basis for a cosmological model. This can be shown by analyzing
the context of Psalm 93:1: ‘The world is firmly established;
it cannot be moved.’

We should understand the terms as used by the biblical authors. Let’s read
the next verse, ‘[God’s] throne is established
of old,’ where the same word Hebrew כּוּן (kûn) is translated
‘established’ [i.e., stable, secure, enduring, not necessarily stationary,
immobile].

Also, the same Hebrew word for ‘moved’ (מוֹטmôt) is used
in Psalm 16:8, ‘I shall not be moved.’
Surely, even skeptics wouldn’t accuse the Bible of teaching that the Psalmist
was rooted to one spot! He meant that he would not stray from the path that God
had set for him. So the earth ‘cannot be moved’ can also mean that it
will not stray from the precise orbital and rotational pattern God has set for it.
Life on earth requires that the earth’s orbit is at just the right distance
from the sun for liquid water to exist. Also, that the earth’s rotational
axis is at just the right angle from the ecliptic (orbital plane) so that temperature
differences are not too extreme.

From a scientific point of view, Bellarmine was right to insist that the burden
of proof belonged to the proposers of the new system. Certainly, the heliocentric
system was more elegant, which is what appealed to Galileo and Kepler, and the geocentric
system was very unwieldy. But this was not the same as proof. In fact, some of Galileo’s
‘proofs’—for example, his theory of the tides—were fallacious.

Did Galileo disprove the Bible?

Galileo was shocked at the thought—he accepted biblical authority more faithfully
than many Christian leaders do today. It’s ironic that the four heroes of
heliocentrism mentioned by Teaching about Evolution—Copernicus, Galileo,
Kepler, and Newton—were all young-earth creationists! But, of course, Teaching
about Evolution does not tell its readers this fact!

Galileo and his opponents would have avoided all trouble by realizing that all motion
must be described with respect to a reference frame. Think about travelling
in a car at 60 mph. What does this mean? It means that you and the car are both
moving at 60 mph relative to the ground. But relative to the car,
you are basically not moving—that’s why you can read the speedometer,
and talk to other passengers. But imagine a head-on crash with another car moving
at 60 mph in the opposite direction. As far as you’re concerned, it would
be as if you were standing still and a car drove into you at 120 mph—which
is why head-on collisions are the worst. Crashing into a stationary car isn’t
nearly as bad. And colliding with a car in front moving at 50 mph would be like
colliding with a stationary car if you were traveling at only 10 mph. In physics,
one is free to choose the most convenient reference frame, and all are equally valid.

Some skeptics have asserted that biblical passages such as Ecclesiastes 1:5, saying
that the sun rises and sets, are errors. But the correct understanding of the Bible’s
descriptions of motion is determined by the reference frame it is using.
It should be obvious that the Bible is using the earth as a convenient
reference frame, as we often do today. So the skeptics’ accusations are absurd—modern
astronomers also refer to ‘sunset’ and ‘sunrise,’ without
any suggestion of error. And when drivers see a speed limit sign of 60 mph, they
know perfectly well that it means 60 mph relative to the ground, not the
sun! So the Bible is more scientific than its modern critics. And although even
Psalm 93:1, cited above, is not teaching about cosmology, it is actually scientifically
accurate—the earth cannot be moved relative to the earth! [See also
Galileo Quadricentennial: Myth vs fact]

Quoted by Marcus Chown, Let There Be Light, New Scientist 157(2120):26–30,
(7 February 1998). See also Stars could not have come from the big bang, sidebar,
Creation 20(3):42–43, June–August 1998. Return to text.

Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus
& Modern Historians (Praeger, 1991). Prof. Russell can find only five obscure
writers in the first 1500 years of the Christian era who denied that the earth was
a globe. But he documents a large number of writers, including Thomas Aquinas, who
affirmed the earth’s sphericity. See also Creation14(4):21; Creation16(2):48–49.
Return to text.

A. Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing
Vision of the Universe (London: Hutchinson, 1959), p. 427. Return to text.

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